A great writer once said “The only nation that truly exists is the imagination.”
Very true. And that is why we laugh when we watch the Olympics. For the 1%, it’s a time to kick back and watch the hoi polloi dance around in their national colors, each one of them waving their flags believing that they actually belong to something and that that rag they call a flag is actually there to protect them, from us. Your average Joe, Jose or Hiroshii is swilling his beer and rooting for the home team. And they enjoy it.
We don’t really care which teams are competing, as long as you can read our logos on all those multicolored jerseys, the ancillary TV rights are lucrative, and we don’t have to pay taxes on any of our income in any of your countries. And you know that has been a pretty good deal for us so far. But it’s not enough. It’s the London Olympics and we want the gold, all of it. So now we are coming for it. Each of these countries has laws created based on the will and the votes of their citizens…and that has gotten increasingly difficult for us to get around.
That is why we are so happy with the job that international corporate attorney and now US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has been doing for us in negotiating, in secret, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ron is carrying our Olympic torch as he blazes toward the our finish line: allowing foreign corporations, or their investors, to strike down ANY domestic law anywhere that interferes with us making profits.
That my friends is not a trade deal, that is our multi-national corporate coup.
Child labor laws? You know it is hard to make those tiny little widgets cheap enough, with a big enough profit margin, without being able to use those tiny little 8 year old fingers.
Ron Kirk understands that tiny hands can generate huge profits. Ron Kirk also gets that tiny hands can be a sensitive topic. And that’s why he has negotiated all of this in secret—not only barring Congressional oversight of the treaty, but working into the deal that no one can see what was agreed on until 4 years after the deal has been signed. Just like the 4 year Olympic cycle.
Ron Kirk may be wearing the US Trade Representative jersey but he is running for US.
And you might be watching the Olympics but we are living on Mt. Olympus, with the rest of the Gods.
